Pain
by MyMischeifCantBeManaged
Summary: Ponyboy story after the death of Dally and Johnny. Sorry crappy summary. Also if you choose to read please do not mind any mistakes I made, I didn't proof read.


Pain.

That was all that I felt anymore. Pain. Is that the only emotion that I have anymore? It sure seems like it.

Pain.

What really is pain?

Everything and anything that hurts. Its not just what you feel when you slice your hand open on a sharp switch blade. It's not just physical. It ranges from the physical to emotional and psychological. And the worst kind of pain at all? Losing someone you loved. Because loving them, that never goes away, not when you lose them like I have. Four people. Gone from my life for good. And though I hate them, I hate them for leaving me, I know that I will never, ever, stop loving them. I couldn't if I tried. Its impossible.

I want to stop feeling this pain, but I also know that without it, I will spiral. I will spiral back to that kid who had just lost his parents. I will go back to being that kid who needed his big brother to sleep with him at night, because he was afraid of what might chase him in his dreams. I will go back to being that kid who did everything his older brother said, got good grades, and yet, knew nothing of common sense. Without pain, I am weak.

Now though, with this pain, I can take on the world. With the pain that is constantly following me around, nagging me, pushing me to break down, I have grown strong. I no longer need my older brother to save me from the monsters that creep and crawl around in my head at night, because they are gone. Because now, now I know that the monsters in your head aren't real, and now I know that the real monsters, they live outside of your head. They live, and they walk and they talk, and they have these feelings, feelings that help tear them down. But I have grown past that. I have stopped caring. I feel like I have lost that one piece of humanity that I had cared about. That small, little piece of humanity that kept me tied to the rest of our gang. And I don't care. Because without that small piece of humanity left, I am free.

Now the only thing I feel is pain. The only thing I feel, is the one thing most people cannot handle, or refuse to be strong enough to handle. And pain has shaped me into the one thing that I feared the most back when I was young, and innocent, and scared of everything.

Pain has shaped me into Dallas Winston.

I guess that even when he is lying six feet under, Dally couldn't let his legacy die. Maybe he always knew it would be passed onto me. I mean how couldn't he? He knew it would be passed onto someone, and Darry, Two-Bit, Soda, and Steve were all too far shaped into who they are now to be changed into anything different. So that would leave me and Johnny Cade. And we all knew that Dally would never, ever, let Johnny Cade turn into another one of him. He tried his best to prevent Johnny from being the next Dally, even though Dally was Johnny's role model. So that would leave me, and only me. Because I am the only one who didn't know who he was, and didn't have the toughest hood around protecting me from becoming the toughest hood around.

I was always meant to be this way. No matter how much I would deny it when I was a younger kid.

But now, now there is no way for me to deny something like that. There is no way. Because not only has pain changed who I am on the inside, it has physically changed me.

I am tougher now, built stronger, I even grew, though I know that has nothing to do with the pain and all with puberty. But pain did change my eyes, they've grown colder, and they look like two pools of ice, secrets frozen behind them. And pain changed my hair, because it grows farther than it has, and it grows free, not slicked back with some hair grease.

Personally, I like the change it has brought to me. I like the way I can look in the mirror, and know that my snarl scares woman and children, and even some men. I like knowing that my eyes can attract both greaser and soc girls, with them thinking that it is possible for me to change, that it is possible for me to be a good person, and that maybe, just maybe, they can melt the blue pools of ice that are my eyes, and have the secrets that they keep flow out with the water. And this vulnerability that they have allows me to hook up with them, and drop them, leaving them in the dust, left behind for another man, one they probably deserve.

But everyone else, they hate the new me. Darry won't even barely talk to me anymore. He communicates with me like he used to with Dally, no surprise there. And Soda, though he acts like he doesn't notice, casts me sad looks, the looks that a kicked puppy would cast its owner, and tells me how proud he was of who I had been becoming, and how he wishes that this cold world hadn't changed me. Two-bit has honestly taken it the best, but I can't tell if that's just because he misses Dally or he is to boozed up to notice, or care for that matter, most of the time. But there are points when he is sober and he lashes out at me, telling me that I am such a horrible person now, and that I need to stop. But I just laugh them all off, because I don't care.

And then there is Steve. This one surprised me. I had always thought that he would be the one happy about my sudden change in personality, but I was wrong. He had always hated me as a kid, but I never would have guessed that he had actually liked me that way, and god knows why he was so tough on me all the time, always tearing down my day back when I cared. But apparently, my change affected him the most, and he hates me for it. I will never forget what he said the first time I walked out of the cooler.

"God damnit Ponyboy! Is this what you really want for yourself? Do you really want to end up just like Dally? I bet, somewhere deep down you don't want to be like this! Please. Pony just show me a sign that you are still in there, because this isn't you, and you weren't supposed to grow up like this. You were supposed to grow up, and go somewhere, do something with your life, and occasionally show back up in the neighborhood, just to drop by and see how the gang is! You were supposed to go and make us proud, you were supposed to help us show the socs that they had nothing on us, besides money. Dammit I was so damn proud of you! I always knew I could brag about you, I could shut them all up! I could make them think that there were good kids who came from the hood, that they didn't all turn out like Dally, or like the rest of us! You were so damn close."

I had been so shocked when he said that, partially because he said it with so much force, so much anger, and so much sadness, he had said it, and it had made him cry. It had made him break down, otherwise he probably could have kept going. I was also shocked because Steve Randles had said something that sounded half intelligent. But I was mainly shocked because he had cared. He had been proud of me. And he had bragged about me.

But I couldn't find myself able to care. I didn't care that the kid I thought hated me the most in the world, didn't. I didn't care about what he had said.

I could tell that I wanted to care about what I had just heard come out of his mouth, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it, and that honestly sucked.

But all of those events, they are what led me here today. They are what led me to be this person, led me to accept the pain more than I had been, and led me to let the pain change me this much.

Because that's what pain does. It hurts you so much, that you change fully. And you cannot return.

XxxXxxX

Disclaimer: I own nothing

And this is the product of angst writing. Thanks for reading, and it would mean a whole lot if you decied to comment, or favorite the story, and maybe favorite me?


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